Embracing Sufferingናሙና

Story 3 – Prayer in Suffering

Jill was just a baby Christian when her young daughter Sally first got sick. Being a teen mom to an infant and a toddler while trying to survive in a squatter community was tough enough, but sickness makes everything harder. Sally was the first one to get the measles and was hospitalized soon after. 

The measles led to meningitis and pneumonia, and the hospital environment led to tuberculosis. Sally was put on feeding and breathing tubes and still has a tracheostomy two years later. The image of her gaunt body restrained and intubated in the crowed public hospital ICU is forever etched in my memory. 

I was afraid to touch her, but she must have felt dreadfully frightened and alone. Jill and Sally had lived with our family for the first six months of her life, and she knew my voice. I knelt down on the cold hospital tile, gently caressed her tiny two-year-old foot and began to pray. 

Even though I was sure Sally was going to die, I prayed. I prayed with Sally, and I prayed with Jill. Our family prayed. Our church prayed. We asked other missionaries to pray. We posted Sally’s picture and asked people around the world to pray. 

By God’s grace, Sally survived! She still has her tube, but she is active and sassy and growing up in a squatter village with her mom, dad, brother and baby sister. 

But this story isn’t about the power of prayer. Sally is not alive because we hit a target number of prayers or because of geographic range or even the earnestness and tears that poured out of my wife and I that first night we called out to God for mercy. Sally is alive because of God’s grace. 

This story is about learning that there is a God in heaven who hears and who has mercy. It’s about a teen mom, helpless and disgraced, who found out that depending on God gives freedom and life. It’s about our shy Jill being overwhelmed by God’s mercy and ministering to the other moms in the ICU, even those whose babies did not recover. In one night, all the babies in the ward died except Sally and one other, and Jill prayed with those moms because she knew that the God of all comfort hears prayers. It’s about a community where a church was forming— being taught to pray rather than consulting with the local witchdoctor for serums and spells. 

The same God who spared Sally is calling all people everywhere to come and depend on him and commune with him. Start building your prayer life today. 

Reflection Questions

What prayers do you know from the Bible? 

Consider reading about how Paul prays in Arthur Pink’s book “Gleanings from Paul.”

What is your first inclination when you encounter suffering? 

How can you build a habit of consistently turning to prayer?